WASHINGTON — Diners will have to wait a little longer to find calorie counts on most restaurant
chain menus, in supermarkets and on vending machines.

Writing a new menu labeling law “has gotten extremely thorny,” says the head of the Food and
Drug Administration, as the agency tries to figure out who should be covered by it.

The 2010 health-care law charged the FDA with requiring restaurants and other establishments
that serve food to put calorie counts on menus and in vending machines. The agency issued a
proposed rule in 2011, but the final rules have since been delayed as some of those nonrestaurant
establishments have lobbied hard to be exempt.

While the restaurant industry has signed on to the idea and helped to write the new regulations,
supermarkets, convenience stores and other retailers that sell prepared food say they want no part
of it.

“There are very, very strong opinions and powerful voices both on the consumer and public-health
side and on the industry side, and we have worked very hard to sort of figure out what really makes
sense and also what is implementable,” FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said.

Hamburg said menu labeling has turned out to be one of the FDA’s most-challenging issues, and
while requiring calorie counts in some establishments might make sense on paper, “in practice it
really would be very hard.” She did not say what specific types of establishments she was referring
to.

The challenges of putting such a law in place — and deciding whom it should apply to — were made
clear Monday when a judge struck down New York City’s ban on large sugary drinks. State Supreme
Court Justice Milton Tingling said in his ruling that the 16-ounce limit on sodas and other
high-calorie drinks arbitrarily applied to only some sweet beverages and some places that sell
them. The new limits, championed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, were supposed to take effect
yesterday.

Hamburg said the FDA is in the final stages of writing the menu-labeling regulations and the
final rules should come out in the “relative near term.” The FDA has tentatively said the rules are
due this spring, but that deadline might be optimistic as the food industry and regulators continue
to haggle over how they will be written.

The 2011 proposed rules would require chain restaurants with 20 or more locations, along with
bakeries, grocery stores, convenience stores and coffee chains, to clearly post the calorie count
for each item on their menus. Additional nutritional information would have to be available upon
request. The rules also would apply to vending machines if calorie information isn’t already
visible on the package.

The proposed rules exempted movie theaters, airplanes, bowling alleys and other businesses whose
primary business is not to sell food. Alcohol would also be exempted.

Supermarkets and convenience stores are looking for similar exemptions in the final rules.
Representatives for the supermarket industry say it could cost them up to a billion dollars to put
the rules in place — costs that would be passed on to consumers.